I've Learned My Lesson Well
by Carole C
Summary: "Three may keep a secret if two are dead." Dean learns that a secret can outlive all three who held it, and that all secrets are ticking time-bombs loaded with unwelcome truth. Spoilers S1-S7, begins sometime in S5. Rated T for language. Destined to become AU after S8 starts. This story posted with pictures on my LiveJournal. PM me if you'd like to see them.
1. April 17

**April 17**

Hey, I've never been afraid to bleed for a good cause, and Sam isn't either. So when Sam saw a notice in the paper about a critical shortage of blood, heck, why not do it again? A needle-stick sure beats the heck out of getting shot, stabbed, clawed or munched as a way to leak a pint of vital body fluid.

We even got plates of barbeque out of it. I admit, we were just about flat-broke that day and we were pushing the limit on our last set of cards, so the free food might have swayed me to go donate more than my love of my fellow man did. It's not pretty, but there it is. You let your gut growl for two days and see what kind of rationalizations you come up with.

Doesn't really matter what my motives were, anyhow. The blood bank benefited all the same. I'm chock-full of clean, healthy O negative; so I'm anybody's donor. Ok, that didn't come out right, sounds kind of sleazy.

Sam's AB negative, that's the rarest type. Something like one person out of a hundred-fifty or half a million or something, I don't know. He could tell you. Anyway, it's rare. The blood bank people are always glad to see me coming, but they flip out like Sam's a friggin' rock star when they type him.

I'm not going to waste time here with every little detail of the process; it's not some occult ceremony or anything. We lied our heads off on all the questions that don't matter and told the truth on the ones that do. Got our fingers stuck and found out neither of us is anemic. Hey, not much chance of that with my cheeseburger intake, but with Mr. Rabbit-chow, I wouldn't have been surprised.

It was a slow afternoon, so me and Sam stretched out on those recliner things and got stuck at about the same time. He bled out a pint faster than I did. Guess I've learned how to hang onto my juice better after all these years, but anyway, he was up and out and in the line for food before I got my bag more than half-filled.

So I had nothing to do but lay on my back and squeeze one of those foam balls and try not to think about squeezing anything else as that cute little bloodmobile ghoul did whatever she was doing, bustling back and forth in that bus. I don't know how old you have to be to draw blood, but she looked young enough to still be proud of her high school diploma. So, neither of us was serious but we were flirting like crazy anyway. Not much else to do in there, once you read the scary hepatitis and AIDS posters.

She rocked my bag and gave me a look that probably meant my macho points were dropping fast. Then she hopped up on the edge of the opposite recliner thing and flashed me some thigh as she crossed her legs.

Along in our random conversation, she brought up Sam's blood type and how rare it was, blah blah blah.

I made some joke about Sam being just like Dad, since they were both AB negative, and Mom was an A positive, something about that being truth in advertising for her or a stamp of approval or some stupid crap. That I got marked down as an easy-going kind of guy, being a universal donor and all. I don't remember exactly, so it was probably totally lame.

It'll take getting my brains splattered all over a wall for me to forget what she said, though.

"Oh? Are you adopted? Or, like, a step-child?" She leaned forward, and got that tone in her voice women do when they're telling some schmuck they've just met more than they ought to. "I'm both, so I understand what it's like."

I probably gave her a really weird look, because she blinked and turned pink.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm way more discreet and tactful than this normally, I swear. But you're so easy to talk to that I guess I forgot where we are and all. I'm sorry. That was TMI and intrusive and forget I asked, ok?"

I could have just nodded or shrugged or told her, hey, no problem, already forgotten. But no, I couldn't keep my big trap shut. I had to give her a panty-melting smile and say, "It's ok. I'm curious now, though. How come you think I'm adopted or a step-kid? I know me and Sam don't look that much alike, but there's a family resemblance if you knew our parents."

"Oh, it's not that at all. I have cousins who are twins but you wouldn't think they should even know each other, to look at them. It's your blood types."

"Come again?"

She uncrossed her legs and clenched them together instead, her hands clasped in her lap. She was nervous. That should have tipped me off right there. "You said your dad is AB and your mom's A?"

I nodded.

"You're sure about that?"

"Positive," I told her.

"And you're certain you're not adopted or something?"

"Sweetheart, I'm not certain about much, but I'm damn sure I know who my parents are."

She got that 'oh, _shit_' look on her face and leaned forward. "Dean, I'm sorry. It's scientifically impossible for parents with those blood types to have a child with type O."

I laughed. "Then the science is wrong."

She came over and put a hand on my shoulder, all big-eyed sympathy and maybe a little pity. I hate that, unless it's gonna get me laid, and this was so not one of those times.

"Blood typing's been around since the twenties," she informed me like I was a sad little moron. "The scientists are certain about this inheritance stuff."

"Until the 1500's, scientists were certain the sun went around the earth, too. The science is wrong," I said, probably more like snapped, judging from how she drew back and crimped her lips.

I hauled up my blood bag. "This thing's about full. Unhook me, I'm done."

She didn't argue. She didn't really look at me either as she unplugged me from the bag like her hands were moving without her brain getting involved. "Dean, I'm so sorry. I really crossed the line here. I'm no doctor or anything, so hey, what do I know, right?"

Her hands shook a little as she taped a cotton ball over the hole and folded my arm up like I couldn't do that for myself. I got it then. She was afraid her loose mouth would get her fired if I bitched about this little uncomfortable conversation.

"No sorry necessary. Forget about it, ok? I already have."

I sat up and swung my legs off the chair right as she said "Wait!"

I barely heard her, because my hearing went on mute and the world was going gray-scale fast. I think I said "Crap!" but I'm not sure the word actually made it out of my mouth.

Obviously, I came to again. I'm not going to bother with that part because it was friggin' humiliating and Sam didn't let me live it down any time soon anyway. I don't hold that against him. I'd still be giving him heat if he'd been the one to faint like a wuss.

It's just damned embarrassing, you know? Plenty of times I've bled till my boots were full and kept right on kicking ass. I fainted because I hadn't eaten since the day before so that missing pint crashed my blood sugar and shut off the lights before my liver got the memo. That's what they told me, so it's official and you can shut it.

When the bloodmobile girls stopped clucking over me and the over-dramatic sympathetic brother act got boring for Sam, I grabbed a plate of barbeque and firmly forgot the entire little drama.

Except that it wouldn't stay forgotten. That's kinda surprising, when you think about it. We were up to our necks in bad-asses from Above and Below, fighting them both to try to stop the Apocalypse. In the middle of a time like that, you'd think it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to me whose sperm slammed into Mom's egg to spark me off and running. Sure doesn't make any difference to the rest of the world, any time at all.

But every once in a while, even then, I'd find myself mulling it over when my mind wandered or when I woke up in the middle of the night. It was like when you have an itch you're not supposed to scratch, or a sore place in your mouth you keep poking at with your tongue.

I never thought about it long, though. Why should I? It was one comment from some girl I didn't know against what I've known my whole life. Stupid to pay it as much attention as I did.

Then Adam got commandeered from Heaven. In the middle of all that train wreck, Cas made one comment and everything I thought I knew about myself blew up in my face.

Cas said, "He is John Winchester's bloodline. Sam's brother."

Now, Cas talks like Rain Man because he takes frickin' forever to pick his words. "Sam's brother," he said. He was talking _to_ _me_, but he didn't say '_your _brother,' he called Adam _Sam's_ brother. It took a while to sink in, but once it did, I couldn't shake it.

The girl in the bloodmobile had it straight. John Winchester is not my father.


	2. May 1

**May 1**

Yeah, it's three weeks later. It took me a while to wrap my head around that one, ok?

Gotta admit though, I'm pretty certain you're thinking what I would have been thinking, if some schmo told me the same sad story.

Big friggin' deal. You're here, dude. Your so-called Dad's dead, and so's your Mom, so what difference does it make now if she banged dear Daddy or the paperboy to make you? Grow some stones, princess, and move on.

Yeah, and I've always been an insensitive jerk like you, too. Let me tell ya, you have no idea what finding out that your Dad's not exactly your Dad does to you. Especially if you'd been raised by my Dad. Shit, Corporal John Winchester makes Gunny R. Lee Ermey seem like Mr. Rogers.

I was scared to death of the guy my whole life, and half the time when he was around, I ended up taking care of him and Sammy both- but I wanted to make him proud, too. More than anything. He was my Dad. He fought monsters. He kept me and Sam and the whole friggin' world safe and whatever he said was pure gold gospel truth when I was a kid.

Shit, even now, when I dream about him, I still call him sir.

Let me tell you, it was a whole lot easier to accept that God has left the building than to wrap my head around the fact that John Winchester's not my biological father. Not that I had a lot of time to stew over it. Y'know, looming Apocalypse and all.

Even if I'd had all the time in the world to navel-gaze and drench my hankie, I couldn't say a word about this to Sam. Sam butted heads with Dad since that Christmas when Sam was eight.

I really think Sam hated Dad after that Christmas. Just a little then, but it kept building up, growing stronger every time Dad dumped us somewhere or passed out drunk or broke another promise. I know Sam. I can read his face and the way he moves so well, he might as well shout out every thought in his head sometimes. I've seen him kill things hand-to-hand with less murder in his eyes than I've seen in him when he and Dad were really going at it.

After Dad died, it was like Sam still had all this rage and resentment and hatred whirling around inside him, but nowhere for it to go any more. He said he was angry all the time, and hell yeah I can vouch for that. A whopping dose of survivor's guilt didn't do either one of us any good, but Sam being Sam, it really ate at him.

All our lives, Sam's been more than a little resentful and jealous of how Dad treated me. Sam still thinks I was Dad's favorite, John's good little wind-up soldier, while he was Little Sammy Screw-up. The reason Mom died and the kid voted most likely to turn monster. What would it do to him to find out now that he's Dad's only real son?

Yeah. Nothing good. So all that and a bag of chips is why I can't ever breathe a word of this to Sam.


	3. May 15

**May 15 **

You know how people say things go south when a deal goes bad? In case you've ever wondered? They ain't talking about Alabama. Trust me on that one.

Life's gone so far south it fell off the friggin' globe. How bad is it?

Sam's gone.

Not dead. Gone. Which is so very, _very_ much worse.


	4. May 30

**May 30**

So why am I sitting here on my ass and not tearing up the planet looking for Sam? Because I know exactly where he is, and there's no way of bringing him back this time, even though accepting it turns me to cold ash inside. No spell, no ritual, no cross-road deal, not even an angelic prison break can get Sam back from where he's gone.

I never told him about Dad. I never told him a lot of things, important things. Now I wonder why the fuck I thought I had to keep it all to myself. He begged me to talk to him, to open up and trust him, more than once.

I should have. I owed him that, no matter what craziness was going on around us. No matter that sometimes one of us _was_ the craziness. Maybe it would have given him at least a little peace to know that he really was the good son, Dad's favorite son. The real son.

So, that's why I'm here, I guess. It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep anyway, so I've decided I'm gonna sit here as many nights as it takes to work through this Dad crap at least and put it in the past where, dammit, it really already is. Except I keep dragging it back up here into the present to pick at and I really ought to stop that. I really ought to get more sleep and eat more leaves and twigs and drink less booze, too, but I don't see any of those things happening any time soon.

I can't really make it up to Sam. I can't do anything at all for him now. But maybe by working though all this in my head, the lesson will finally sink in and I won't have to take this class over. The final exam is a stone bitch. Especially when you fail it.

I don't want to make the same mistakes with Ben that I made with Sam. That Dad made with both of us.


	5. June 2

**June 2**

Ok, I'm back now. So... what's my evidence for Mom putting the Big Lie over on Dad?

a) My blood type. I didn't rely on that little bubble-head's opinion, I did the research. The scientists may be proven wrong three hundred years from now, but here in the twenty-first century the rules of blood-type inheritance look pretty damn airtight to me.

b) Cas's choice of words about Adam. Two sentences wouldn't be evidence in anybody's book (well, unless they were 'Yes, I killed the dude. I shot him in the face.') but not just anybody's hung around Cas like I have. The mook could take five minutes to choose just the right words to order a cup of coffee. He's not gonna blurt out something like that without having an ulterior motive behind it.

c) My memories. Mom and Dad fought, and hey, even I'm perceptive enough to realize that if I remember them arguing a lot, and Mom died when I was four, then they were fighting _a lot_, at least in that last year or two.

d) My gut. Smirk all you want, but my gut's saved my ass more times than I want to count up. My gut tells me this hurts, but it hurts like truth.

What evidence do I have against?

a) My birth certificate. That's pretty official. Legal in court and the whole nine yards.

b) Mom and Dad's word. 'Nuff said.

c) Michael's whole Cain-and-Abel bloodline spiel. Yeah, yeah yeah. He's an Archangel. Top of the god-squad food chain. He's also the lying, flying, douche bag of dubious destiny and has the serious hots for my meat-suit. The silver tongued ultimate "good son" who doesn't know what Big Daddy's will even _is_ anymore. Talk about your friggin' daddy issues and sibling rivalry- Michael and Lucifer, they wrote the damn manual. So, I put more weight on the words of the iffy lower-case angel in the grungy overcoat. Thanks all the same, Mikey.

d) My last few memories of us all as a family. They're happy ones. We were happy, or at least it sure looked like that to four year old Dean. Happy wives don't cheat on their happy husbands, not even in pornos.


	6. June 6

**June 6**

And all that pro and con turned out to be a total waste of snore-time when I got the package Missouri over-nighted from our old mail drop. The cosmos loves pulling stunts like that for shits and giggles as far as I can tell.

It was from Jenny Richardson, the woman who lives in our old house. She promised us years ago that she'd return anything she found of ours. Well, she kept that promise.

Turns out Jenny decided to have the duct work cleaned, and this box was shoved back into the duct in the downstairs guest bedroom so far that you'd never see it if you looked through the vent. It's one of those metal boxes people used to store their canceled checks and crap in.

Missouri said the thing has our Mom's aura all over it and her voice had that 'oh honey' sympathetic tone that puts my guts in knots. When she feels sorry for you out of the blue, you better watch your back or you might be kissing your ass goodbye.

I knew I wasn't going to just toss the thing into the trash unopened. I had to know what was inside. Still, I sat for the longest time with the thing in front of me on the bed. Just staring at it, even though it would take all of ten seconds to pop the lock and get it over with.

When I raised the lid, I swear I could smell Mom's perfume. Only for a few seconds, but I know it wasn't some mind-trick. I still don't know what to make of that. Probably nothing more to it than a trace of lotion from her hands or maybe she sprayed the inside of the box with the stuff for all I know. It was just freakin' strange to smell it again. Made the hair stand up on my arms.

Perfume or not, no doubt this was Mom's stuff. The first thing I pulled out was that silver charm bracelet she was wearing when I met her back in '73. If I'd had any doubt about it after that, the little beaded blue and white bracelets in there would have cinched the ID. Not much bigger than my ring, one had SAM spelled out on the white beads and the other had DEAN.

Of course, there was no reason to lock up a charm bracelet and two hospital baby bands and some other sentimental stuff and shove them up out of sight in an a/c vent. The real pay-off was the book that was in there with them.

At first, I just mulled over the stuff Mom stuck in her diary. Photos, mostly.

There was one of Dad in a full dress Marine uniform, standing at attention in front of knotty pine paneling in somebody's living room. He had private's stripes, so it must have been taken right after he finished boot camp. His eyes were focused up above the head of whoever was taking the picture, but even though he had that parade ground blank stare down pat, you can tell he was scared to death. Gah, he was just a scrawny kid!

No matter what that war was really all about, you had the guts to man up and do your patriotic duty. Thanks, Dad. That makes you a hero right there. Oorah!

Me, pulling my mouth out almost to my ears with my fingers, big spaghetti smears all over my face and down the front of that "I Wuv Hugz" t-shirt. You know I wuv _you_ Mom, forever- but someday I'm getting some major payback outta you for that damn stupid shirt. What the hell were you thinking?

Sammy, real tiny in this one. Must have been three, four months old maybe. All big eyes and big mouth, reaching for a bright paper flower somebody's dangling in front of him. Nearly every time you looked at Sammy, you could practically see his tonsils. He looked like he was screaming his head off in every baby picture. He wasn't.

He was laughing. Sammy Winchester had to be the world's happiest baby. Mom claimed in her diary that he smiled at her before they cut the cord and I know for a fact that he didn't stop for a long time after.

Ok, I'm not going to think about when he did stop. That water passed under the bridge a very long time ago, and there's no fixing it. I was a little kid and stupid and scared spitless myself. I still regret what I told him that night, but if the truth hadn't come out then, it would have near then, anyway. It had to. Hell, I'm walking talking proof it always does, no matter how hard you try to keep it closed up in a locked box in the dark.

There were two little folded squares of wax paper tucked in there, too. One of them held a ringlet of hair that... well, there's no other way to describe it than pale gold, corny as that sounds. It has a reddish tinge to it and that would have been enough even if she hadn't tried to write "DEAN" on the wax paper with a ball-point. Obviously, my hair's darkened up a lot over the years.

The other one's marked "SAM" and the lock is glossy and almost straight and so dark brown it's nearly black. Pretty much like Sam's hair still is.

Both of them are so soft you can hardly feel them at all, like a baby chick's fluff. I can believe a lot of damn near impossible things, but it's hard to believe I was ever that little. I can't quite picture it. Sam, now, I can still remember exactly how his hair felt when he was a baby. Heck, if I concentrate, I can still remember how all of him felt then, soft and fragile and how he'd get heavier and heavier as he went to sleep, in that weird way babies do when you hold them a long time.

And I'm rambling again. I don't have time for that.

The picture I looked at the most, though, was one of those old black and white instant snapshots. It's a scruffy-looking guy with hair down past his collar and a half-hearted mustache, looking back over his shoulder. I didn't have a clue who he was till I flipped the picture over.

Yeah, holy crap. It's Bobby, when he was barely over thirty years old. You're probably way ahead of where I was then, because at that moment I sat looking down at that familiar stranger wondering why Mom would have a picture of Bobby Singer of all people, back in the day.

Hey, denial's a powerful force and I'm a friggin' black belt at it. Besides, even if you've figured out the who and what, you don't know the why yet. The how? Dude, there ain't no force in Heaven, Hell or on dear ol' Terra Firma powerful enough to make me imagine that.

Ok, moving on- the reason I spent so much time looking at the pictures and stuff was because Mom wrote her diary in code. Sneaky, Mom... and smart. It took me almost two weeks to crack it, and then another week of practice before I was able to read the thing like it was normal English.

My name, and Sam's, were the Rosetta Stones. You're probably thinking there's some deep meaning in that, but don't bet the farm on it. I'm pretty sure by this point that there's no deep meaning in anything- If you see some, it's only your brain trying to organize utter chaos.

I wrote down the code-key, but here's the most important parts for this. On March 18, 1978, she and Dad fought again, and this time it went nuclear. Dad packed his crap and stomped out. According to Mom's diary, he didn't call her or anything after that for a couple of weeks. Like that's not a familiar pattern, huh?

She'd had enough of the whole bad-romance tango by then, and decided to file for divorce. Then, on April 10, 1978, she wrote this:

_When the phone rang Wednesday morning, I grabbed it up and said "John?"_

_There was a pause and then this almost familiar, deep cowboy drawl answered. "Uh, sorry, no. This is Bobby Singer. I'm trying to get in touch with Mary Campbell and I was given this number."_

_Of all the people I expected to hear on the phone, Bobby Singer was just about the last on the list. He and Mom corresponded a lot, trading research and keeping tabs on a lot of the Hunters in this part of the country. Mom really liked him, and she felt sorry for him too, I think, because of what happened to his wife. I never knew much about it other than losing his wife was what turned Bobby into a Hunter. _

_She did tell me he was an incredibly intelligent guy, and a sharp Hunter. That he might even turn out to be one of the best. They had a strong friendship going after a while, even though Mom never said much about Bobby around Dad. _

_I met him a couple of times when he and his partner Rufus Turner passed through Kansas, but I knew of Bobby, more than I really knew him. Dad wasn't exactly the social type, especially with other Hunters. Mom would invite Rufus and Bobby over anyway, and would always try to keep me from leaving to go somewhere with John when they were here._

_Talk about your awkward social moments... Mom tried to be subtle but I knew what she was doing and to my complete chagrin, so did Bobby. At least she was more subtle about trying to keep me in the life than Dad was. _

_Bobby was all Mom said he was, and a friendly, handsome guy to go with it. Even though Mom's matchmaking attempts made him uneasy, he still liked me enough to pay me at least some attention. And yes, I flirted with him. A little. _

_So Mom's plans could have worked out, except that I was deeply in love with John Winchester by then, and even more deeply, absolutely determined that I was **not** going to live my life as a Hunter or god forbid, as the civilian wife of a Hunter! _

_It had been quite a while since Bobby passed through, since right after I graduated and long before...well, everything else that happened. _

_So yes, Bobby Singer was the last person on earth I expected to call that morning. "This is Mary. Mary Winchester, now."_

_"So you married that mechanic fella. Congratulations!" _

_I could hear the smile in his voice._

_"How're y'all gettin' along?" he asked._

_I burst into tears right there on the phone. I was mortified, but Bobby was nice enough not to hang up. In fact, he was really concerned. _

Ok, I thought I could transcribe the rest of it over, but I can't. It's too... It makes me feel like a peeping tom, ok? Upshot is, she and Bobby got together, she cried on his shoulder, they got together-together. You're all grown up, you know how crap like that can happen.

I don't hold it against Mom. Not really. She'd had it to the teeth with Dad's emo garbage, and I guess she felt like she had already pulled the plug on their marriage, just hadn't filled out the paperwork yet to make it official.

And Bobby, hell, I can't begrudge him any happiness he was able to grab, no matter where or who with. I can't really even imagine how lonely he must have been, especially back that far.

And don't spout that crap about how it's better to have loved and lost, blah blah. I've watched Dad, and Bobby, and Sam suffer enough to know that having it and losing it is worse. It's so much worse...

Anyway, Bobby couldn't stick around because he was on a hot case, and Mom really didn't want him to, anyway. He was a Hunter, and she truly never did want to have anything to do with the life once she got out of it.

Then Dad came home a couple of days later, puking all those melodramatic, sincere, worthless promises that women have fallen for since bad relationships began. She let him back into the house and they celebrated.

A couple weeks later, she missed her period. Uh. Oops. Two guys, bareback, within a week of The Day? That puts a crimp in a woman's certainty for sure. She was going to have a kid. Somebody's kid, but definitely hers, regardless. She had to make her marriage work. Hell, she loved Dad still. She _wanted_ to make it work.

So, she kept her mouth shut to Dad and to Bobby. As far as I know, neither of them ever suspected a thing. Nobody questioned that I might not be John Winchester's spawn- at least, not until that day at the bloodmobile.

There was something else stuck in that diary that really made me feel like a peeper. It's a letter from Bobby. Mom tore the bottom off, the part with his address and phone number and his signature too- but that handwriting's unmistakable.

It's damn near a love letter. A freakin' love letter from Bobby Singer to my Mom. Just writing that makes my head hurt.

It's pure Bobby, all blunt and gruff but kinda sideways sweet too. He never came right out and said he might be in love with her or anything. He said he understood about her not wanting to get tangled up in the life again, but he promised her he'd always take care of her, if she ever wanted to let him. That if she ever felt like she needed to leave John, to remember that she had somewhere to go, no strings attached.

Yeah, for Bobby, that was a flaming love letter right up there with the immortal classics.

I left it where I found it. I'll never read it again.


	7. April 24

**April 24 **

Sam's back!


	8. April 29

**April 29**

Sam's really messed up. Mind-fucked beyond belief. But he's here and he's alive. Everything else can be repaired. Just might take a while.


	9. May 20

**May 20**

I know now what's worse than loving and losing. It's loving and losing and knowing they won't even remember you.


	10. May 27

**May 27**

I'd get down on my knees and thank God for putting Sam's brain back together, except that God appears to be Castiel at the moment.


	11. October

**October **

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I don't call, I don't write, I never pick up my voice-mail. Blow me. I've had more important things on my plate.

Sam's got all he can handle right now, dealing with his time in the Cage on top of all the other crap, so even though I've learned my lesson the hard way, I'm going to keep this hidden for now. I'll talk to him and Bobby about it later, when things calm down some.


	12. December 2

**December 2**

Bobby's dead.

We barely got to say goodbye. My _father _is really gone, and I never got to tell him anything I should have. Like, thanks for always being there. Thanks for showing us what a real Dad acts like. Thanks for letting me and Sammy be kids when we were with you for a little while. Thanks for treating us like men when we got back together again, even when we were acting like idjits. Just... thanks Bobby. For everything.


	13. May 17

**May 17**

I can still smell that fire, even though I took a shower and changed my clothes. I got a second chance with Bobby, but I didn't tell him anything about this crap.

I didn't tell him because I decided it doesn't matter anymore. Bobby's really my Dad. Always has been. Sam's too, and the biology doesn't matter a damn bit. The way Bobby looked at us, the way he called us his boys- he knew. In all the ways that mattered, he knew we were both really his in all the ways that count.

I'll admit, though, dropping his flask into the flames ranks right up there with the worst things I've ever had to do. I hope he's with Karen now and they're having a blast roaring around Heaven in that crappy ol' Chevelle.

If I get back up there, I'm finding Bobby Singerland first thing, because he'll be a big part of Dean Winchesterland too.


	14. May 18

**May 18**

Nothing in here before this is worth wasting time and energy on anymore. Daddy issues drop _way_ down on your priority list when the whole human race is about to be turned into brain-dead livestock.

Tomorrow's our one-time only shot at making sure the world still has the freedom to sweat the small stuff. We screw this up, and all anybody will have to worry about ever again is when they've got their date with a meat-grinder.

I'm leaving this journal where you can find it pretty easy if you have to go through my stuff. Not that I've got a death-wish or premonition or anything. Just saying. Just in case.

Sam, you can get rid of all my crap. You can even get rid of the car. But keep Mom's diary if you can. If I manage to pull another Get Out of Dead Free card somehow, that's my only possession that really matters to me anymore.

So now I'm done, except for this. There's one more thing I have to say. The most important thing of all.

I love you, Sam. More than anyone or anything. I should have said it a long time ago, and I should have said it a lot, especially when you were a little kid- but I'm saying it to you now, and back-dating it twenty-nine years, too.

I love you and it doesn't make one damn speck of difference if we had different fathers or hell, even different mothers. We're brothers, hundred-percent. From always to amen.

If you're reading this, and you aren't Sam, then what the hell's your problem, dude? Get the fuck out of my-


	15. May 22

Sam closed the journal and cut off Dean's words. He picked up his mother's delicate silver charm bracelet, rubbed the pentagram between his fingertips. Tears rose in his eyes but he didn't seem to notice.


	16. Epilogue

Past the small bubble of heat and reddish light thrown by their cautious fire, it's bone-aching cold, foggy and dim. It's always bone-aching cold, foggy and dim. There's no day, no night here. No way to mark passing time at all. Maybe there is no past and future any more. Only one grinding, crushing infernal _now_ of eternal fight or flight. No time outs, no off-season. Nothing but one pointless death-match after another. Nobody even wins the grand prize of staying obliviously dead.

The dying part, though―that hurts every bit as much as it ever did. Maybe more. The only way to avoid it, Dean learned after that first… hour? day? night? century, maybe... Doesn't matter, the only way to have even the illusion of a moment's peace in here is to kill the other thing first.

Cas crouched and touched Dean's shoulder. "Something is approaching," he whispered as Dean lifted his head. Dean picked up his wooden spear with the fire-hardened point, rolled to his feet and checked that his razor-sharp hunk of obsidian was still secure in its make-shift sheath.

Cas moved to stand at his back, wings spread wide. The addled angel still wouldn't fight but Cas decided, after watching Dean get ripped to shreds a couple of times, that standing sentry and serving as a shield and the eyes in the back of Dean's head wouldn't compromise his pacifist principles.

By that point, Dean was grateful enough for any relief at all that he couldn't work up much resentment. He'd learned since then not to waste any energy fighting home-made monsters like resentment, anger and regret. Fighting the ones outside his head took everything he had.

Red eyes flashed through the sulfurous fog. Closing in.

Dean raised his spear, gripped his stone knife tight. "Hope I live to tell."

That whisper may have been a prayer.

Of all the monsters in Purgatory, Hope dies hardest of all.


End file.
